


Mein schlaues Mädchen

by Molly_Hats



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batwoman (Comic), Bombshells (Comics), DC Bombshells (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Language, Nazism mention, So much angst, Takes place during Bombshells #7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 02:43:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13515030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Hats/pseuds/Molly_Hats
Summary: The green batgirl’s looking at her questioningly out of the corner of her eye, but Bette ignores her, tunneling through an avalanche of memories to emerge in the present day reality whereAunt Kathyis aNazi sympathizer.





	Mein schlaues Mädchen

The sinking feeling in Bette’s stomach starts the moment the words “Headmistress Webb” leave his lips. She can’t remember feeling this lost, even as the certainty that she knows who this is builds in her gut. She anxiously watches the doorway for the woman who’s been the only constant in her life for so long. Her newfound teammates sense her unease, but she can’t tell them why that name disturbs her so much, not without giving away secrets that aren’t hers to give. She’s still hoping no, telling herself not to jump to conclusions, that just because it’s a woman with the surname Webb who could get onto the infamously nepotistic Kane Industries board quickly and easily doesn’t _necessarily_ mean it’s Aunt Kathy… 

The woman herself steps into the room, some sort of weapon in her arms, flanked by flunkies in lab coats, and her fear is confirmed. She knows they’re pointless, but she can’t stop the words from slipping out, barely stopping herself from calling her by the familiar title: “Headmistress Webb...Katharine Webb?! From the Kane family?”

She wants to yell, she wants to tackle her and scream something clever or at least pointed, but all that really comes to mind is “What the hell?! You’re a Nazi? I’m a fucking Jew! I thought you were okay, you bitch!” which isn’t particularly witty and would probably just make Kathy lecture her on swearing again.

The green batgirl’s looking at her questioningly out of the corner of her eye, but Bette ignores her, tunneling through an avalanche of memories to emerge in the present day reality where _Aunt Kathy_ is a _Nazi sympathizer_.

She’d never kept a diary, instead writing letters or calling Aunt Kathy through all the turmoil and chaos of her life. Yes, some of the content had to be redacted for security reasons, and some of her letters remained unsent, but a good portion went through, and Kathy almost always replied immediately, whip-smart and full of funny anecdotes and good advice and tales of her days in the travelling circus. 

When she was five, Uncle Philip lost everything in the crash and jumped out of a window. She tried to find him after he left her request for a bedtime story unanswered, taking a walk along creaky floorboards in the dark with the unfamiliar sounds of downtown Gotham, looking around and not finding him anywhere before she spotted the only window open, curtains pushed aside. She walked over, looked down, saw the body in the streetlights. Aunt Kathy talked to her at the funeral, wiped her tears, told her that she was clever for figuring out where he had gone using the clues. “Mein schlaues Mädchen,” she called her.

When she was eight, Mother fell asleep in the sitting room and let her cigarette fall from her hands and set the rug on fire. She stomped it out with the help of a blanket, a vague memory of a book she’d read coaching her through it, before going to wake Mother. Mother was annoyed about the rug, but hugged Bette, called her her sweet girl, good girl, brave girl. Kathy covered her in compliments too, told her she would’ve been good in the circus with her quick thinking and reflexes and fearlessness. “Mein schlaues Mädchen,” she said with a smile. “A shame I sold Haley’s.”

The day after the fire she came home from school to find the maid crying, Uncle Thomas trying to tune her out while talking to Father, Father staring into the distance, stone-faced, then seeing her and solemnly ushering her into another room to tell her that Mother was gone. She called Kathy crying, asking what’d happen now, how could Mother just die like that, why couldn’t Uncle Thomas save her. Kathy didn’t answer her questions, just listened.

When she was nine, Father looked for where to send her, seeking boarding schools and relatives. Kathy was unavailable and wouldn’t say anything about her location except that it was “wo sich Fuchs und Hase gute Nacht sagen,” a phrase she rather unfairly challenged Bette to piece together with her new dictionary. Bette studied maps and asked others, consulted encyclopedias and other, bigger dictionaries, letting several letters go back and forth between her and Kathy before she finally mustered the humility to ask what exactly she meant by “where fox and hare say goodnight to one another.” “You’ve learned the most important lesson for life, mein schlaues Mädchen,” she wrote back, “some things you can’t figure out with confidence on your own. You must decide when and with whom you must consult.”

Father finally sent her to stay with Aunt Adeline and her husband in England, sending her across the sea when more people were trying to get _away_ from Europe. Grant ran away to join the army, his perpetually scowling eyebrows hiding his eyes in shadow as he swore her to secrecy. She caught her own eyes in the mirror and thought she saw a ghost, the moonlight on her pale skin and hair and white nightgown making her look ethereal, insubstantial, ghostly. 

When she was ten, cousin Joey was kidnapped. Slade brought him home in his arms, a long red slash on his throat and his clothes stiff with blood his father hadn’t staunched the wounds quick enough to save. Bette practically moved into his room for her remaining months at the Wilson house, trying to understand what he was trying to say by reading the soundless words on his lips. 

Just after she turned eleven, they got a message that Grant was dead. Slade and Addie fought more often and violently after that, shouts and thuds and smacks just outside of the silent sanctuary of Joey’s room. Bette lay her head on the bed by Joey when they tired of the lessons, her long hair splayed out over the covers, hand on her cousin’s. She’d sigh and wait for the noise outside to fade. Finally something broke, some final line crossed. Bette jerked out of a sound sleep in the chair and looked to Joey, who made a crude finger gun, mouthing “gunshot.” She scrambled to the door, peeking underneath. Her eyes met one of Slade’s, open and unseeing, blood slowly spreading around it, dyeing his white-blond hair pink and sliding across the floor. “Mein schlaues Mädchen,” she whispered to herself as black spots began to dance before her eyes. She pushed herself up and staggered back to Joey. “Mein schlaues Mädchen, be brave,” she told herself, imitating Kathy’s subtle German accent and imagining her aunt’s comforting arms around her, her eyes watching her with pride, her voice instead of her own whispering the words.

(The morticians did their best to make him presentable for an open casket funeral, but the bullet came out through his left eye. They compromised, using an eye patch to cover the flaw, and Bette spent the entire funeral staring at it, horrifying images of what it hid circling in her mind like vultures for a kill.)

When she was twelve, she came home to find Kate gone and Father dead, leaving her to Kathy. Kathy’s job kept her busy, and she wouldn’t talk about it with Bette, so Bette mastered the art of snooping, piecing together the stories on the news and details Kathy couldn’t suppress to theorize about Kathy’s exciting double life.

Kathy gave her more and more freedom as she got older, taking off on longer trips, always leaving her with a kiss on the forehead and a fond order to “Take care of Gotham while I’m gone, mein schlaues Mädchen.”

And now she’s seventeen and she sees what Kathy’s idea of “taking care” of Gotham means, and she feels the tears starting to sting at her eyes, her heart thudding in her chest like it’s about to explode and kill her like Mother’s did, pins and needles running up her arm. She grips the bat all the tighter, glares to push the tears back, and when Kathy— _Headmistress Webb_ —doesn’t recognize her, she tells herself it’s for the best. 

_Epilogue_

When she’s eighteen, she takes over the company. She’s eloquent and clever and brave, takes responsibility, takes action. Ordinarily she’d imagine Aunt Kathy cheering her on, advising her, or maybe envision how she’d humble-brag the event to her aunt over the phone or in a letter. 

Now there’s emptiness there, but it’s worse than a mere absence. It’s an injury, a slashed throat, the exit wound that displaces an eye. 

She is not her aunt’s clever girl anymore. She is her own, a woman on her own and in her own right, an heiress and a businesswoman, a proud Jew and a proud Kane.

She smiles and takes the podium to announce her new position.

**Author's Note:**

> Bombshell Bette is better than all of us. I love her so much protect her.


End file.
